A Severed Head

by Iris Murdoch

  To end the silence which had gone on too long I said to Georgie, ‘How smart you’re looking! Quite the up-to-date girl.’

  Georgie smiled, Antonia sighed, we all fidgeted a little, and Alexander murmured, ‘There was a young man of Pitlochry, Kissed an up-to-date girl in the rockery …’

  Still desperately kicking the conversation along I said, ‘And talking of Pitlochry, where are you off to for your honeymoon?’

  Alexander hesitated. He said, ‘New York, actually,’ and looked at Georgie. I looked at her too. She looked down into her glass.

  We were all silenced again. That had been an unlucky move and I could see Georgie’s averted face stiffen and grow burning red.

  I said hastily, ‘How nice. And where will you live? Mainly at Rembers? Or up in town?’

  ‘Both, I expect,’ said Alexander. ‘But we certainly intend to inhabit Rembers properly, not just at week-ends.’ He answered vaguely conscious of Georgie’s mounting distress.

  ‘That will be good for Rembers,’ I said. ‘It’s a house that loves people. It will be good for it to have a real family in it, to have children there again.’

  As I said this and promptly wished it unsaid, I heard Georgie draw a sharp breath. She closed her eyes and two tears rolled suddenly down her cheeks.

  Antonia heard the indrawn breath and turned her head. She saw Georgie’s face. Then she said Oh, her mouth worked, her brow reddened, and her own eyes, like two great wells, were instantly overflowing. She bowed her head over the glass which she was holding stiffly in front of her and her tears fell into the champagne. Georgie had covered her face with her handkerchief. I looked at Alexander and Alexander looked at me. After all, for better and worse we had known each other a long time.

  Twenty-four

  Extreme love is fed by everything. So it was that the shock of Georgie’s decision, once the immediate pain had been suffered, opened as it were a channel down which my desires with an increased violence ran in the direction of Honor. The thing seemed intended; and in that perspective Georgie’s action, though hideously upsetting and painful, counted chiefly as a clearing of the decks. I was, it seemed, to be deprived of consolation. I was to be stripped, shaved and prepared as a destined victim; and I awaited Honor as one awaits, without hope, the searing presence of a god. There was nothing which I could reasonably, even, expect: yet all was in the waiting. It was not until I was positively pushing open the door at Pelham Crescent that it occurred to me that I might not, in the course of my embassy, set eyes on Honor at all: so closely did I think of the brother and sister as being connected.

  I closed the front door behind me and hung up my dripping raincoat. I had set out far too early from Hereford Square and had spent some time walking about in the rain trying to become calm and rational. All the same, my heart nearly choked me, so high did it leap, as I knocked on the door of Palmer’s study and went in to the lamplight and the quiet interior, warm and dry and close-fitting as the inside of a nut. Palmer was alone.

  He lay outstreched on the divan. He was in pyjamas, with the purple dressing-gown and thick red slippers. Although he had his back to the light I saw at once the greenish shadow on his cheek, the remains of the black eye. I saw it with surprise, having forgotten that I had struck him, or having not quite in retrospect believed that his flesh was vulnerable. He was fumbling when I came in with a large box of paper handkerchiefs. A wastepaper basket full of crumpled paper was beside him and his first words were, ‘My dear fellow, don’t come near me, I’ve got the most devilish cold!’

  I sat down on a chair against the wall, as if I were in a waiting-room. I looked at Palmer wearily, passively. Perhaps after all I had only come to be judged and punished. I waited for him to act.

  He sneezed violently several times, said, ‘Oh dear, Oh dear!’ and then ‘Do have some whisky. There’s some on the side, and ice in that barrel thing. A cold always goes straight to my liver so I’ll stick to barley water.’

  I helped myself and lit a cigarette and waited. It now seemed clear to me, desolately, that I was not going to see Honor; and if this, inconclusively, was the end it was a terrible one.

  ‘How is Antonia?’ said Palmer.

  ‘Very well,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Palmer, ‘but she will recover. Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. She will forget soon.’

  ‘You demon,’ I said. ‘You speak as if you were not, yourself, in the least involved.’ I spoke dully, however.

  ‘No, no,’ said Palmer. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. I was very carried away by your wife, very carried away indeed.’ He sneezed again and said ‘Damn!’

  ‘Have you succeeded in forgetting how charming she is?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you want me to?’ said Palmer.

  ‘Leave me out,’ I said.

  ‘Dear boy, how can I?’ said Palmer.

  ‘That’s the trouble,’ I said. ‘No one can leave me out. Yet I don’t fit in either. Never mind.’

  ‘Why did you come?’ said Palmer.

  ‘Just so as to close the matter. Antonia likes things neat.’

  ‘By “neat” do you mean tidy or pure?’

  ‘Tidy. You flatter yourself, by the way. Elle ne vous aime plus. But your cooperation is needed to make an end. How exactly you do it I leave to you. These subtleties are in any case your province.’

  ‘Does Antonia want to see me?’ said Palmer. I looked at him closely. His clever eyes were upon me. His hand moved slowly to jettison a handkerchief. The darkly shadowed cheek seemed to suit him, suggestive of some half remembered picture of Dionysus. I thought, he is sure I have told her. I said, ‘No.’

  Palmer watched me a while and then sighed and said, ‘It is better so.’ He added, ‘How are you, Martin?’

  ‘Dead,’ I said. ‘Otherwise fine.’

  ‘Come,’ said Palmer, ‘tell me, tell me.’ His voice was caressing and persuasive.

  I was surprised to find myself braced as for a resistance. I said, ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing?’

  ‘I mean, no loose ends.’

  ‘You are a liar, aren’t you,’ said Palmer.

  I stared at him. It seemed impossible that he should not know all that was in my mind. I wondered what Honor had told him. I said, ‘Palmer, I came here to take leave of you, on behalf of Antonia, and to arrange to remove the things which she left here. May we keep our attention on those two matters?’

  ‘I’ve had her things packed,’ said Palmer. ‘That will be dealt with. But do you seriously intend to stay with Antonia after all this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You are most unwise,’ he said. ‘You should take this opportunity to part. It will be far better for both of you – and harder later. I speak quite disinterestedly, of course.’

  ‘Clinically,’ I said. Some deep attentive thing within me responded to his words as to a longed-for summons. But I continued, ‘We are not going to part. And anyway it’s our business.’

  ‘Your marriage is over, Martin,’ said Palmer. ‘Why not recognize it? Wouldn’t you like to talk it over with me? Indeed if you like “clinically”. I don’t mean necessarily now this minute, but soon. I feel sure I could help you.’

  I laughed. ‘For the first time since I met you I find you capable of stupidity.’

  Palmer looked at me with the deliberate gentleness of the professional doctor. I noticed that behind his head the row of Japanese prints had been replaced. He said, ‘What seems to you my stupidity is simply my need. We don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘We,’ I said, ‘for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Honor and I,’ said Palmer.

  I tried very hard, deepening my frown, to let my face reveal nothing. ‘What would not losing me consist in?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Why should we be able to define it beforehand? Let me be simple. I think it is important for you both that you should leave Antonia. You want to leave An
tonia; and this is not a moment for placating your very abstract sense of duty. On the whole, “do what you want” costs others less than “do what you ought”. You will destroy Antonia slowly if you stay with her. Be resolute. And don’t be ashamed to accept help. The psyche abhors a vacuum. Honor and I are going away soon to travel, far away, and for a long time. Nothing real detains you. Come with us.’

  I looked at the ground. Palmer had a talent for making me feel that I was going mad. I had never heard speak more clearly the voice that says ‘all is permitted’. And with that ‘all is permitted’ came also ‘all is possible’, and a vision of Honor, somehow, somewhere, after all, existing in my future. I looked up again and saw that, coming from the door behind Palmer, she had entered the room.

  I rose, and for a second I wondered if I should faint. But then, holding the back of my chair, I saw myself confronting them as a prisoner confronts his judges. This made me harden and I breathed and sat down again, staring.

  Honor was dressed in a high-necked black garment of which I could not remember afterwards whether it was a silk dress or an overall. Her arms were bare below the elbow. She stood behind Palmer, whose relaxed body seemed to glow with awareness of her, and they both observed me, Honor with her head lowered and her shining band of hair falling forward to frame her eyes. She stood behind Palmer like a captor, and the voluptuous curve of his relaxed body spoke the word ‘victim’. I felt I ought to turn away.

  ‘I’ve asked Martin to join us,’ said Palmer. He was watching me with a broad half-smiling face, as one might watch a struggling fish or a fly.

  ‘Are you mocking me, Palmer?’ I said. I could not look at Honor.

  ‘Don’t fall below your destiny, Martin,’ said Palmer. ‘As a psycho-analyst, I don’t of course imagine that freedom is to be won by convulsive movements of the will. All the same, there are times of decision. You are not a man to be bound by ordinary rules. Only let your imagination encompass what your heart privately desires. Tell yourself: nothing is impossible.’

  I laughed and rose to my feet again. ‘You are mad,’ I said. ‘Do you really imagine that I could live, for however short a while, with you two, that I can even go on knowing you two? Am I to take this seriously?’ At this my eyes met Honor’s over Palmer’s head.

  In that instant a communication passed between us, and even as it did so I reflected that it was perhaps the final one. I did not imagine it; she gave me a very slight shake of the head and a curtain came down over her eyes. It was a decisive and authoritative farewell: in the pain of which, as I received it, I also knew for certain that she had not talked about me to her brother. It was our first and last moment of intimacy, vivid, but concentrated to a solitary point. I looked back instantly to Palmer.

  I said, ‘We have finished with each other.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Palmer, ‘since we are going away for good, I doubt if we shall meet again.’

  ‘Then good-bye,’ I said.

  ‘As you choose, Martin,’ said Palmer, ‘as you choose.’

  Twenty-five

  ‘He was terribly depressed and disappointed,’ I said, ‘but as you can imagine, very clear-headed. He told me to say you’re not to worry about him and that he’ll recover in time. He said how grateful he was to you, how he hoped he hadn’t hurt you, how he wished it had all been possible. He was brave though. He said he had to accept your decision and that it wouldn’t really have worked. But he said it was a marvellous attempt and he wouldn’t wish it undone.’

  We had been over this a number of times. ‘I wonder how I know that you’re lying?’ said Antonia.

  It was breakfast-time, a late breakfast-time, on the next day. Antonia and I, still in dressing-gowns, were sitting on over the cold toast and coffee. It seemed that neither of us could move. She was pale, listless, and irritable. I was exhausted.

  ‘I’m not lying,’ I said. ‘If you won’t believe what I say, why do you keep asking me?’

  Now that the taboo had been broken Antonia could talk of nothing but Palmer, endlessly remaking her relationship with him retrospectively.

  ‘Whatever he said he didn’t say that,’ said Antonia.

  I had not the heart to tell her that she had scarcely been mentioned. ‘Alexander’s right,’ I said. ‘He’s not quite human.’

  ‘When did he say that?’ said Antonia.

  ‘When he heard about you and Palmer.’

  Antonia frowned down at the cold cloudy liquid in her cup. She pushed back on to her shoulder the half-undone bundle of her weighty hair. She said ‘Ach -’, and then ‘Nor is she.’

  ‘Nor is she,’ I agreed, and sighed. We both sighed.

  ‘I hope they go to America or Japan and stay there,’ said Antonia. ‘I don’t want to hear of them again, I don’t want to know that they exist.’

  ‘That’s what will happen, my darling,’ I said. ‘Falling out of love is a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. You’ll be surprised how soon you forget.’ We sighed again.

  ‘Forget! Forget!’ said Antonia. ‘We both seem to be half dead.’ She lifted her eyes to mine, sombre, restless, cross.

  I wondered whether I did indeed want to leave her. Yes, I suppose I did. Not that it mattered. I wondered what, at that moment, she was thinking about me. With curiosity and hostility we examined each other.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you, Martin?’ said Antonia. She asked it, not tenderly, but with a sort of brisk anxiety.

  I said, ‘Of course I do, of course.’

  It sounded flimsy enough, and we went on looking at each other morosely, our eyes dark with private grief. It would have needed a great effort to take her hand and I did not make the effort. And as I stared and stared at last Antonia became invisible and all I could see was Honor, her dark assassin’s head bowed a little towards me, the curtain falling upon the light of her eyes.

  ‘There’s a parcel for you, by the way.’

  I returned with a start. I broke up some cold rubbery toast in my hand. I wondered if I had the energy to make us some more hot coffee. ‘Oh, where?’

  ‘In the hall,’ said Antonia. ‘Don’t move, I’ll get it. And I’ll put on the kettle for more coffee.’

  She came back in a moment carrying a long narrow box covered in brown paper which she put down beside me with the words ‘Orchids from some admirer!’ and then went away into the kitchen.

  I looked at the box and picked at my lower lip. My lips were dry and cracked with too much smoking. I lit another cigarette and wondered distantly how I would get through the day. It was a problem demanding some ingenuity. I glanced at the window and saw that it was still raining. I cut the string of the parcel with the bread knife.

  I had no fight in me, that was the truth. I did not want to receive any more lashes. Palmer had too much confused me. If he had deliberately intended to place a barrier across the path of my desires he could not have done better; and this made me half believe that, after all, he knew. But with this, and with far more authority, there came the image of Honor shaking her head: Honor utterly secret but lost. I began to pull t he paper off the box.

  Palmer did not know, but it didn’t matter now whether he knew or not. They would go, the infernal pair, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Tokyo, and Antonia and I would forget; and I would do, and she would do, what defeated desire, together with a bored and dim conscience, suggested as remaining for us to do. I opened the box.

  There was a lot of dark stuff inside. I stared at it with a sort of puzzled revulsion, wondering what it was. I stood up and moved the box to the light to see it better. I felt I did not want to touch it. At last I did very gingerly touch it, and as I did so I realized that it was human hair. It took me another moment to recognize the long thick tress which filled the box as Georgie’s hair, Georgie’s whole beautiful dark chestnut-tinted head of hair. I cannoned violently into Antonia in the doorway.

  ‘Georgie,’ I called, ‘Georgie,’ and banged again upon the locked door of her room. There was s
ilence within.

  As I got the car out I exclaimed to Antonia that of course Georgie must be all right since she would be with Alexander, and Antonia had told me that Alexander had rung up from Rembers last night when I was out and had mentioned that Georgie was still in London. All the same, Antonia thought my anxiety was completely irrational. I knocked again.

  I listened to the silence. Of course it was ridiculous to be so afraid. The arrival of the hair had had the heavy significance of a token in a dream; but there was no need to apply nightmare logic to it. Georgie’s present was doubtless a jest, though a rather bitter and macabre one. She herself was probably at this moment in some nearby library, and I stood outside an empty room. Yet I could not quite convince myself of this and I knew that I could not go away. I wondered if I should make some more telephone calls; but I had already rung all the numbers where she might be found. Almost by now I simply wanted to get into the room as if this in itself would avert disaster. The locked door had become magnetic. Still I waited, until, prompted suddenly by something I thought I heard, I leaned down and put my ear to the keyhole, holding my breath. After a moment I heard a sound and then came the same sound repeated. It seemed to be a low regular sigh of heavy breathing coming from just inside the door. I straightened up and stood for a moment chilled and paralysed. What I had heard terrified me. ,